Despite the bear market, the crypto exchange Huobi continues to expand diligently. This time through an investment in Japan. And this despite bear market. An analysis.

The Bit Trade crypto exchange announced in a press release on September 12 that Huobi has acquired a majority stake in Bit Trade. The goal behind the investment is to expand further (to Japan).

Huobi’s investment is also important for Bitcoin formula

The first remarkable thing about the investment is the Bitcoin formula. Even if we are in a bear market, the companies will not be deterred by it. So is Huobi. After an expansion to San Francisco, Huobi reports in April that it is considering opening an additional branch in London. Huobi also opened its Huobi Pro branch in South Korea in April. The move to Japan is now a further step in Bitcoin formula market expansion.

The Importance of Huobi and Bit Trade
Secondly, the importance of Huobi and Bit Trade in the cryptoscene is important. Both are very important. On the one hand, Huobi is one of the oldest trading platforms with its foundation in 2013. On the other hand, it is one of the largest stock exchanges in terms of trading volume (at the time of publication it was the third largest in terms of 24-hour trading volume). It seems that Huobi intends to continue to expand this position.

Japan as an important Bitcoin trader market

Bit Trade was founded in 2016 and is therefore much younger, but only one of the 16 stock exchanges approved by the Japanese Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA). And the Bitcoin trader are very interested in Japan. In August, Bitcoin.com reported that some 160 exchanges had applied for an FSA license. Of these, however, only ten percent received a license. These regulations have their origin in the coincheck hack of January this year. After Coincheck stole about 430 million Euros worth of this NEM token, the FSA has started with its strengthened regulations. These showed their first effects in March. First, the FSA (temporarily) banned two crypto exchanges from trading. A little later, five more exchanges withdrew their application for an FSA license. In September, the FSA additionally strengthened the requirements for Bitcoin trader.

Huobi’s market entry strategy: Acquisition instead of bureaucracy
Finally, Huobi’s market entry strategy is also remarkable. Instead of going the arduous route of licensing, Huobi avoids this bureaucracy by acquiring a licensed platform. A similar strategy is pursued, for example, by Rakuten. At the end of August, Rakuten (one of the world’s largest Internet companies, whose portfolio includes Viber-Messenger, among others) acquired everybody’s bitcoin, a stock exchange also approved by the FSA. It seems that Japan is developing into a highly competitive market for crypto exchanges.

According to the Russian IT security company Group-IB, hackers of the Lazarus Group have managed to steal assets from crypto exchanges with a total value of 571 million US dollars since the beginning of 2017. The attacks are attributed to the North Korean government.

According to the annual report “Hi-Tech Crime Trends 2018” of the Moscow IT security company Group-IB, Lazarus is apparently the most successful hacker group when it comes to attacking crypto exchanges around the world to tap their digital assets. Since the beginning of last year, the hackers controlled by the North Korean government have allegedly stolen wallets of various crypto currencies with a total value of 571 million US dollars. That is the equivalent of around 495.43 million euros. The cyber criminals have their sights set on the online trading centres in South Korea and Japan. The report is not yet publicly accessible. However, the news portal TNW already reported in advance that in 2017 and 2018 together, a total of 882 million US dollars worth of assets were stolen. The Lazarus Group is said to be responsible for the lion’s share of these virtual thefts.

Hackers in this sector mostly use traditional methods such as spear phishing, social engineering and malware. With Spear Phishing, the targets are Bitcoin trader review. These look as if they came from a trustworthy source. In reality, the e-mails are used to lure victims to fake websites. There the target Bitcoin trader review computers are infiltrated with the help of the malware implemented in the pages and then completely taken over. To achieve this, the cybercriminals alternatively send infected PDF documents by e-mail, Group-IB reports.

After taking over the PCs, the hackers try to search the entire network of a company. The computers and servers containing the data of the crypto currency wallets are located. The perpetrators using phishing are said to be responsible for 56 percent of the stolen ICO assets. The report states that in the last year and a half about ten percent of all ICO wallets have been stolen. The phishing hackers should be able to collect about one million US dollars a month. The aim, however, is not only to attract the operators of crypto trading centres, but also an increasing number of people and companies that are involved in crypto mining. There is also a lot of money to be raised there.

Particularly perfidious: social engineering and the crypto trader review

In so-called social engineering, the private and professional environment of an employee is researched in order to later mislead him. The messages of the perpetrator, who pretends to be the contact person, are intended to create crypto trader review trust. The person (often a colleague or superior) then asks the victim to disclose passwords or other sensitive information like this https://www.geldplus.net/en/crypto-trader-review/. The hacker can maintain his deception until the person concerned has the idea of contacting the contact person elsewhere (e.g. by telephone). In this case, the fraud is discovered immediately. Of course, social engineering is much more successful with trusting or authority-hungry target persons than with skeptical people who are not afraid to make themselves unpopular with their superiors, e.g. through their control call.

Lazarus Group – or covert operations under false flag?
Even if there is no discernible reason for a Russian company to make false accusations in the direction of North Korea, such accusations must always be treated with caution. The secret services or leading corporations that act on their behalf often leave false traces. The aim is to distract from one’s own identity. Experts speak of “false flag operations”. This refers to covert operations by military or intelligence organizations under false flags. This approach has always been common practice in information technology.

The start-up Crypterium, which was founded in Estonia in 2017, has set itself the goal of simplifying payment with crypto currencies. Now it has landed a big fish: The former CEO of Visa in Great Britain and Ireland, Marc O’Brien, has joined the start-up as CEO.

Crypterium wants to integrate payment with Bitcoin and Ether into everyday life. To this end, it hopes to cooperate with Visa or MasterCard to introduce crypto currency cards. With the new CEO Marc O’Brien, who headed Visa in Great Britain and Ireland from 2008 to 2014, the start-up has taken a big step towards its goal. Last year, Crypterium collected 53 million US dollars with its ICO.

Information about the Bitcoin code review

Crypterium’s motto “Whatever you can do with your money, you can now do with your crypto” already sounds very ambitious and can be seen here: https://www.geldplus.net/en/bitcoin-code-review/. But they seem to be on the right way. So the new CEO with a visa background is just the beginning. The start-up company plans to hire an entire team of experienced financial service providers in the near future. In this context, they have already hired a recruiter. The Crypterium team currently consists of three Bitcoin code review representatives in London and ten in Moscow. O’Brien told Business Insiders that offices in New York, Singapore and Miami are now planned. The company is currently seeking extensive legal advice on this in order to obtain all the necessary licenses. O’Brien revealed:

“They are very good at recognizing that they were the right team for the concept and execution of the ICO, but now that they are entering the operational model, they need to bring in experienced, professional staff who are familiar with large-scale projects and global operations.

Currently, payment with cryptos is still quite complicated. In order to simplify this process, Crypterium wants to develop a card that can be integrated into the existing wallet. If the user wants to make a transaction over it, Crypterium receives a corresponding request and, after successful verification of the credit, gives the green light for the payment. “You can stand in a shop and all of this can be done in a fraction of a second,” O’Brien stresses.

“Secret Sauce” of the Bitcoin code scam

How the start-up will deal with the extreme volatility of the Bitcoin code scam shown by onlinebetrug, however, is not known. According to O’Brien, this is the “secret sauce” of the company, intellectual property regarding these details is “carefully protected”. However, the new CEO points out the advantages that are particularly important for high inflation markets such as Argentina or Turkey: “We have a unique opportunity to provide some degree of safety for consumers in these countries.

Crypterium is currently in discussions with potential partners. However, it intends to publish its first products in the autumn of this year.

The Blockchain company Blockstack organized an event with well-known speakers such as Nick Szabo and Edward Snowden. In addition, it was presented which projects are currently being pursued on the platform developed by Blockstack. A report about a day for decentralization.

The Axica Congress Centre is internally very futuristic. The auditorium in which the Blockstack Berlin event took place is reminiscent of a spaceship. Of course, the crypto aficionado was immediately forced into the “to the moon” association.

Empowerment through block stack

At the event organized by Blockchain company Blockstack, however, neither Lambos nor Bubbles were on the agenda – the topic of “price” played a subordinate role, if any, in all the presentations. Only in a panel discussion on investment in decentralized ecosystems moderated by William Mougayar was this the topic.

The central theme of the event was rather “freedom”

The topic was data ownership, privacy and empowerment of the individual. Accordingly, Peter van Falkenberg, moderator of the event and research director of Coincenter, ushered in the day with a quote from the recently deceased John Perry Barlow:

“To shape the future, it helps to foresee it. And so I foresaw Utopia. I had hoped that this would give freedom a small edge over Moore’s and Metcalfe’s laws. These eventually brought what Ed Snowden calls turn-key totalitarianism.”

John Perry Barlow was not only a member of The Grateful Dead, but also an important person in the Cypherpunk and Hacktivism movements with the declaration of independence of cyberspace. He told Bitcoin developers to be careful: “They are currently building the technology of future freedom and slavery. This is the goal that the various projects on this day have dedicated themselves to.

A glance at the list of speakers shows that going into each presentation would go beyond the scope of the conference. A special focus was the presentation of projects developed on the basis of the Blockstack platform. Blockstack is presented in detail in a separate article, in short the interface reminds of Google Apps, but without the centrality. Graphite, for example, is a Google Docs based on Blockstack. In the afternoon, various projects were presented in short pitches and projects from decentralized social networks to a censorship-free podcast platform and new decentralized organizational models could be demonstrated. Many of these can already be tested on the Blockstack platform.